Amando Doronila
CANBERRA (Philippine Daily Inquirer/Pacific Media Watch): OPINION: Let there be no mistake about this. Since his proclamation by Congress as President-elect, Rodrigo Duterte has engaged the media in a relentless campaign of coercion and harassment to browbeat journalists into submission before he takes office on June 30.

The interregnum marked an unprecedented test of wills between the presidency and the media, a ferocity not experienced by any incoming administration in the history of the adversarial relationship between the two social institutions.

The conflict has entered an impasse from which none of the protagonists appears to be backing off.

No incoming President has mounted such a dangerous challenge to the media since the dictatorship of President Ferdinand Marcos.

In that conflict, journalists critical of the abuses of power by Marcos survived 14 years of the martial law regime, which jailed a number of its critics.

None of the critics was threatened with summary executions by squads sponsored by nonstate law enforcement actors.

Under siege
In this running conflict, freedom of the press has come under siege and has in fact suffered erosion without the formal declaration of emergency powers of a burgeoning, aspiring dictatorship, as Duterte awaits his inauguration.

Are we indeed entering a twilight zone in the transition of our electoral democracy?

This impasse leaves little room for complacency in the light of Duterte’s campaign to eradicate crime and bureaucratic corruption in six months from his inauguration on June 30.

Media reports abound about this struggle of the press to defend its freedom from the creeping erosion posed by a supposed campaign against criminals, drug lords and corrupt officials demonised by partisan propaganda as enemies of the state.

One of the recent media reports comes from the Associated Press (AP). In this story, Duterte is reported to have blasted media groups for condemning his earlier comments that appeared to justify the killings of journalists because they were corrupt or overly critical.

The journalists were depicted as allies of the criminal suspects tagged by Duterte. He refused to apologise and dared reporters to carry out a threat to boycott his news conferences.

Pacific Media Watch is compiled for the Pacific Media Centre as a regional media freedom and educational resource by a network of journalists, students, stringers and commentators.
(cc) Creative Commons